We were descending the walk from Karlštejn castle with two new friends from Prague. They are Czech natives and friends of folks from home, so they helped us to navigate the trip to Karlštejn, ordered lunch while we were there, and provided wonderful conversation about the Czech Republic and their extensive travels. They have excellent English, though their accent (as with any non-native English speaker) sometimes makes me request a repetition. And, of course, there are certain vocabulary words that you just don’t have if you didn’t grow up speaking English. It was the latter that made the following strange encounter that much more interesting.
As I said, we were walking down the path from Karlštejn castle. It was late afternoon, we were on our way back to Prague. I thought, given the fact that they have a young son, that they would want to say good-bye to us and head home for a restful evening. Not so.
There had been a lull in the conversation for a moment or two, then our Czech host says:
“Would you like to go to a, um—” a moment while he searches for the word, “Burning—”
Burning? What English word could he be trying to get at with “burning”?
He asks his wife for help (in Czech), but she doesn’t seem to have the vocab for this one, either.
“In English you have the veezards, yes?”
“Veezards . . .” Think! What word in English, when spoken in a Czech accent, produces “veezards”? Wizards! “Wizards?”
“Yes, wizards!” he says. “But the women wizards.”
Suddenly I am hit by a lightning bolt—probably a magical one. “Witch?” I’m not really keen on saying the rest of it, in case I’m wrong.
“Yes, witch!” he says enthusiastically. “A witch-burning!”
Did he just invite us to a witch-burning?
I repeated the phrase in disbelief, wondering how we had moved from discussing post-communist Czech democratic politics to the shameful tattered remnants of Salem, Massachusetts. Maybe “witch-burning” means something different to the Czechs than it does to us. At least I hope so. As much as I like trying new cultural experiences, I don’t think I could justify hanging out and watching while they burn young women at the stake.
It turns out that the Czechs didn’t really know the origins of this “witch-burning” tradition, either. It’s just something they do every year, usually involving a bonfire, hot dogs, and dressing up the little kids. So we went with them to a big public park in southwest Prague, ate klobasy (Czech sausage) and watched as firefighters in full gear managed a raging bonfire amidst a crowd of youth and young adults. The closest we came to a witch was a bunch of kindergarteners with face paint and a woman with a pointy black hat. (She was enjoying a klobaska, too.)
Our friends looked on the internet and found that the “witch-burning” of Prague dates back to a time when 1 May was the first official day of spring. The night before was considered especially vulnerable to evil spirits (including witches), so the village would gather around a bonfire lit to scare them away. Then folks would take torches or ash-brands into their homes and clear the evil spirits out of each room. (This sounds similar to the rituals around Beltane, the Celtic day(s) of fertility in the spring.) There must have been witches burned at some point, because apparently some 30 April celebrations have a straw witch to be burnt in effigy; the fire we attended didn’t have one of those. They just had big bright balloons with rabbit ears for the kids.
For any of you who are interested, the evening is also called “Philip-Jacob’s Night,” but our Czech hosts didn’t know why this is so.
We look forward to future parties when we can tell people (over knackwursts, maybe) that we went to a witch-burning in Prague.
~emrys
No comments:
Post a Comment